The Queen's Rambles

I guess it’s really true that the second child gets short shrift. That’s already happened in numerous ways, from lack of documenting every single detail of the pregnancy to lack of pictures of every single expression she makes.

Here’s a small sample of things that never would have happened with Erik.

1) I never would have left him unbuckled in his bouncy seat, EVER. Thus I never would have walked in and found him face flat on the floor. How does a newborn flip out of a bouncy seat?
2) I never would have let him cry without checking on him for more than 15 seconds. Thus I would have found him, face flat on the floor, a lot sooner.
3) I never would have forgotten his blankie. Thus I never would have had to wrap him up in a dishtowel at a MOMS Club potluck.

And that’s about all I’ve got tonight.

I’m the new editor of our MOMS Club newsletter and am quickly re-learning the number one lesson that three years of editing Mosaic Minds taught me. People will never meet deadlines. And the Mosaic Minds people wanted to be writerly. How am I ever going to get the new board members to give me their two paragraph biographies? They were due yesterday. It wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I keenly remember the other lesson of Mosaic Minds–get the writing in front of as many eyes as possible before publishing. There will be stupid typos and errors no matter how many great editors look it over. I am not working with a bunch of writers on this project, so I really need to get it out early to the other board members and beg them to look it over for reals instead of just saying “looks great!”

Did you guys hear the scare about sun screen? It causes cancer or something? Will someone research that and get back to me? I just hear rumors and don’t really have time to look it up myself. I have been *gasp* cleaning and organizing my house while the baby sleeps. I am not the best housekeeper by any stretch of the imagination, but lately I’ve got a hankering to have things put in drawers instead of in piles all over my house. I don’t want to end up being a hoarder. Not that I would. I am ruthless about giving this away on freecycle, but we still have too much stuff. Or maybe we just don’t have enough room? One of these years I’ll have my dream McMansion and we’ll have so much room I won’t have to have piles. Except? I know that the more room we have, the more junk I collect.

Speaking of getting rid of stuff, my mom took all Erik’s old 3T and 4T clothes back to Oregon. I was sort of torn about giving them to my sister since I know she things Erik dresses like a dork and I figured she wouldn’t use them. I guess she doesn’t have quite the same fashion sense when it comes to her step-grandson.

My mom confused me yesterday by referring to the “four kids.” It turns out that my sister’s step-son dropped his 3 year old off two weeks ago and hasn’t been back for him. My sister has been in contact with the mother of the kid and she said she might “drop by to say hi.” Uhhhh. So they just abandoned their little boy with my sister? She shouldn’t even have custody of her three kids because she can’t take care of herself! Granted, her house is a much safer environment than their place, but that’s not saying much. It makes me so angry that these people are able to reproduce and give their children such shitty lives when I know so many people who desperately want children and would make fantastic parents. Reason number one why I can’t believe in God any more. No God I want to believe in would do that to innocent children and the people who would take good care of the innocent children.

Isn’t that just a cheery note?

Speaking of not believing, I find that aggressive atheists are just as annoying as aggressive religious people. I guess it’s the first time I’ve ever encountered aggressive atheists. I don’t like to be told what to think by any one, even if I agree with the sentiments. Why can’t every body just believe what they want to believe, as long as they don’t hurt other people? Of course, that’s a big part of the problem. People can’t just let others be. They have to try to control the world to make it fit their own moral code.

I can’t even control a four year old, so how am I going to control the world’s moral code?

It has been a crazy couple of days around here. My new “home alone with two children” status was put to the test and if I can survive the past couple of days I guess I can survive anything. It helps that the baby sleeps all the time.

Yesterday I tried to turn the shower off, as normal people do, but it was a no go. The hot water kept flooding out despite my best efforts to turn the knob really hard. It wasn’t a knob issue. It was a plumbing issue.

I knew I had to turn the water off, but I also knew that I didn’t want my water off all day. I had the brilliant idea to just turn off the hot water, so I went to look for a knob or something and could only find one.

It’s really fun to try to solve plumbing dilemmas while you’re panicked, barely wearing a towel and milk is dripping all over the place from your mongo boobies.

Thankfully my dad is a plumber, so I called him at 7 am his time and was able to get some help with turning the hot water off. He wasn’t drunk yet, so he was able to tell me that I just needed to replace the washer in the faucet and it would be good to go. It would be a ten minute job, tops.

Ha!

Ha I say!

It’s a ten minute job when you’ve been a journeyman plumber for over 40 years. It’s not a 10 minute job when you’ve never done so much as found the water main in your house before.

I couldn’t start the job right away because Erik had a class way the heck far away, so we had to drive almost an hour to his class, be at his class for a couple of hours and then drive an hour home. Holy shit. What was I thinking with this class?

Ok, I was mainly thinking that Mike could take him. It was a four part class and Mike was able to take him to the first three parts. I didn’t realize what a crappy drive it was. It sounded so simple on the map, but I didn’t realize I would mainly be taking surface streets all the way to Silver Spring ie doing big city driving.

I got lost on the way home, and that certainly didn’t help matters.

I finally got home and started the real plumbing work. Erik, of course, wanted to help me. The bathroom is tiny and he is loud and squirrelly. I was sleep deprived. It wasn’t a good scene.

I called my dad, but it was 1 pm his time so he’d already consumed at least 15 beer (sadly, I am not even exaggerating that point. He literally drinks a cube or more of beer every single day) so he was pretty lit up. He kept telling me to take the [nonsense plumbing word that I can’t remember] off the stem. I didn’t have a clue how to do, especially since I didn’t know what [nonsense plumbing word] was. Instead of helping, he just kept yelling about how to do step five when I still still stuck at step 2.

Finally my mom got on the line and walked me through it, so I got the whole thing taken apart just in time for Mike to walk in the door and go buy me a new washer.

No one realized that the washer was connected to the stem with a screw. Well. I’m sure my dad realized, but he didn’t think he needed to tell me. He is not good teacher material.

We got everything back together and the problem was even worse than before.

Mike took it apart again and found a random screw hanging out in the pipe. We didn’t know where it was supposed to go, so Mike went back to the store and bought a whole new stem. It had a screw in the right place so suddenly things made a lot more sense. The old screw and washer were crumbling into pieces, which was the problem in the first place.

Finally, finally, finally after three hours of work Mike got the thing put back together. He even bought channel locks, aka Rusty from Handy Manny. Did you know they don’t call them channel locks in Maryland? Apparently they call it a pipe wrench.

At least we’ll know what to do when the cold water faucet goes out, right?

We thought we were all happy go lucky and ready for a nice hot shower, but we were wrong. My dad neglected to mention that if you shut off pressure to the water heater the pilot light will go out.

Poor Mike took a cold shower before his 4 am maneuver. He was not a happy camper.

At least I know how to light a pilot light, even though I hate doing it. There was a humongous spider in the closet and I only had a puzzle box lid to defend myself with. I suppose I could have used the lighter, but the spider was so big it probably would have just pulled out a cig and asked for a light.

Thankfully it stayed way over in the corner while I did my work. Don’t think I wasn’t skeeved out. I wanted to smash it, but it was so big that the thought of the crunch it would make was grosser than the spider itself.

Isn’t being a home owner grand?

At least Erik’s little class is over. I was really annoyed by the other parents. No one would even say hello or chat. They were doing bubbles yesterday and the teacher had three giant bubble wands out. I made Erik share the wands, but none of the other parents made their kids give the other kids a turn. It was beyond irritating. How can you stand there and see that a little kid wants a turn and KNOW that your kid has had lots and lots of turns and not say “Ok, you get three more bubbles then it will be the next kids turn?” How??? People are so selfish.

On a positive note, we found a really cool playground afterwards. If you are ever in the Silver Spring area, go Brookside Gardens and go all the way to the nature center. The nature center itself is pretty cool and we had fun looking at turtles and snakes and honey bees. Anyway, up behind the nature center they have a small playground made out of things found in nature–just stumps and twigs and such. Erik loved it, as did the other kids. My favorite was a giant bird’s nest the kids could play in. I think Erik just loved all the stumps that he could jump around on.

Cute baby thing: If you’ve ever met me in person you’ve probably seen me raise my eyebrow. I can do it on command, but I mainly do it unconsciously when I’m excited, skeptical, or whatever. I have a very expressive face. I would make a terrible poker player. Anyway! Guess who else can raise her eyebrow? I about died when I saw her little eyebrow (or what will eventually be an eyebrow since there’s no hair there right now) shoot up.

Also, if you’ve ever met me you know I turn red when I am upset or excited. I always know when she’s pooping or about to get upset because her eyebrow ridge and eyelids turn bright red. If she’s really, really upset her whole face will turn red.

She’s not going to be able to play poker either.

Today is probably the tiredest I’ve been since Elsa was born. She has a cold so she can’t lay flat on her back and sleep. I’ve read that you can let them sleep in their car seats, but I’ve also read that letting them sleep all night in their car seat is HIGHLY! DANGEROUS! LIKELY TO INDUCE DEATH!

So yeah. That means she slept on my chest all night (not at all dangerous. . . ), so all night long all I heard was the snorting of a kid who can’t blow her nose.

I was supposed to go to a meeting at 9:45 so was up by 8 to get ready for it. It was cancelled at 9. Bah! I could have been sleeping more!

Instead of going back to bed like a smart person, we dressed the kids and took them to a park. We finally had a nice day and we all needed to get some vitamin D in our veins.

I almost called 911 at the first park. There was a guy with an off-leash pitbull. I know that it is all about the owner, blah blah blah, but I see a pitbull and I freeze up. I’ve heard too many stories about them going nuts for no reason and all I can do is sit and imagine my precious son being ripped from limb to limb by a crazed dog. It’s wonderful living in my head.

There was a lady confronting the owner, telling him to get the dog on a leash. He had a leash. He refused to put the dog on a leash because “ya’ll are crazy people, ain’t you never heard of a friendly dog?” No matter. Dogs must be on leashes. There’s even a huge sign in the park informing dog owners to keep their dogs on leashes.

Things really got crazy when another dog came along and the owner let it off leash. The pitbull went straight for it and they started playing nicely together. I suppose I could have chilled out and enjoyed the sight of happy puppies, but I freaked out instead and practically ran to the van with my baby. The dog owner noticed and was making rude comments in my general direction, but who cares? Erik was playing with the owner’s son and the kid (maybe 8) seemed pretty confused about why his new friend had to leave so I made sure he heard “we don’t like to be around dog’s that aren’t on leashes.” Not the kid’s fault, but maybe next time he’ll ask his dad to keep the damned dog on a leash.

It all worked out. We went to a different park and ran into a few people we knew. I am still irked that the guy wouldn’t put his stupid dog on a leash, though. Don’t people know better in this day and age?

We had Elsa’s one month check-up this afternoon, only a week late. I knew she was pretty big but didn’t expect to hear that she was 13 pounds. No wonder she can’t fit in any of her 0-3 month clothes. The doctor told me not to feed her so often but that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. How do you not feed a one month old when she’s hungry? I’m not concerned about her weight. She’ll slim up when she starts walking. She’s already really strong. She can push up off her hands and knees already. The doc said she would have thought she was a 3 or 4 month old baby if she didn’t know her age.

Jeez. Mike is watching the most horrible scene from a movie ever. There’s a baby rolling down a staircase in a stroller in middle of a shoot out. Not exactly what I need to be watching.

Anyway, my side is feeling a bit better. It still hurts, but I think it feels better when I get out of the house and do stuff instead of sitting around focusing on the pain. I had an ultrasound yesterday but they didn’t tell me anything. I was really hoping it wouldn’t be internal, but it was. Gah! The worst part was that they had these fancy little dressing rooms across from the ultrasound rooms and bathrooms, so I had to prance around in the hall with my hospital gown on. I’m so glad everyone in the place got to see my lily white ass. There weren’t any men in the halls when I was walking around, but after I finished there were two men walking through. I don’t understand the point of fancy dressing rooms. They might be fancy, but I don’t care how fancy it is. I’d rather take my clothes off in the exam room and not prance around the hospital half naked.

I can’t remember what else I was going to write about today. I’ve only been writing this entry for 8 hours. The baby is asleep, so I better get to bed too.

I’m feeling pretty blue these days thanks to hormone surges, sleep deprivation and chronic pain and uncertainty about my health’s future. I need to stop dwelling, though. There are good things in life!

Like this handsome lad. He’s a sweet boy when he’s not being a total shit head. Today he told me not to worry about grocery shopping. He’d do it if I’d just drop him off. I’m sure he could do a fairly decent job of buying stuff. It wouldn’t be what we wanted, but he knows how shopping works.

And I’m not an abused wife! That’s always a good thing. Mike doesn’t want to go out in public with me until the botched IV bruise goes away. He thinks everyone would think he abuses me, but I don’t know how he would have given me a bruise there. He said he could have slammed my arm in the door. He put a little too much thought into it.

Other good things:

*Polynesian Chicken Wraps, which are probably not very Polynesian at all since I’ve totally re-done the recipe. I’m obsessed and can’t get enough of them.

Basically you bread some chicken tenders in curry seasoned flour and fry them up. Squirt lime juice over them after they drain a little.

Get a big ol’ tortilla and fill it with cooked jasmine rice, the chicken, cilantro, green onions and mango sauce. It’s only good if you have the mango sauce (half Major Grey’s chutney and half sour cream). I think it might be tasty with chopped peanuts, but never remember to buy peanuts. I have also made it with rotisserie chicken and that was pretty good too. Serve it warm.

*Arranged. We watched this on Netflix streaming the other night and I really enjoyed it. It’s about the friendship between two young women who are getting ready to enter into arranged marriages, one Orthodox Jew and one Muslim. Very good!

*The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen. This is her third book and this one is just as enjoyable as her other two. I wish I knew what to call the genre so I could find similar books, but I’ve never read anything quite like it before. They are all set in the modern day south, but in small little towns that have magic. I guess technically they would be fantasy, but they aren’t fantasy like I think of fantasy. It is just weird little magical things in the town like wall paper that changes to suit the mood of the occupant or a guy who can smell and see cake particles. Strange, but very well written and very satisfying.

*A non-screamy baby. I can’t say this one enough. Today I was finally reading the baby care booklet the hospital sent home. It is basically worthless for an experienced mom, but one part said “never shake or throw the baby no matter how frustrated you get.” I was thrilled to realize I haven’t wanted to shake this baby a single time. With Erik I felt like I was often on the verge of shaking or throwing him. It took every ounce of motherly love I possessed to put him in his swing and go hide in the bathroom with the water running. All that screaming takes a major toll on a person’s mental and emotional well being. With out the constant screaming I am not feeling one step away from child abuse. That’s what I call a great thing.

And now I’m off to bed. I think my last good thing of the night is percocet. I still have a bunch left from a couple of weeks ago and I think I need one, even if they do make me really stupid.

You guys are all so wonderful. Each and every one of you deserve your own reply, but this is the first time I’ve had the computer without a kid on my lap and I want to be in bed right now so this is what you’re getting.

I still have no idea what’s going on. My fever is gone so I think my infection is under control. I am not fully convinced it was a kidney infection rather than a run of the mill UTI. Who knows.

I am still having a lot of side pain, the exact same pain I was having last year around this time before I got pregnant. I am hoping that it will finally be fixed in the near future, but it is taking awhile to get the ball rolling.

I have an appointment for a pelvic sonogram with doppler on Wednesday. The point is to see if the cyst is twisting my ovary, which could be causing the pain and needs to be surgically taken care of ASAP. After doing a lot of reading I am fairly sure that’s what is going on. I am not thrilled by the idea of a surgery, especially with a newborn in the house, but if it would take care of this pain it would be worth it. I talked to my mom yesterday and she said she would come out here to take care of us so that makes it a lot easier to contemplate the idea. I’ve also been doing a lot of pumping the past few days and am happy it goes quickly. I still have a major oversupply so getting a freezer stash isn’t that bad.

I was really pissed at the radiology place today. I talked to the doctor on the phone and she told me exactly what to ask for when I called the radiology place. I would think a doctor knows what she’s talking about.

The scheduler, a man who has worked at the radiology place for two whole years as he kept telling me, was a total jerk. He had never heard of a pelvic sonogram with doppler so that meant it must not exist. He had me on hold for several minutes then came back on and said I could have that type of sonogram but that I would have to sign a waiver because he didn’t think insurance would cover it unless the doctor had a good reason to order it. Well duh! When I told him why the doctor was ordering it he said he’d never heard of such a thing, which is total bullshit. Maybe he hasn’t heard of such a thing, but I think an experienced doctor might know a wee bit more than a scheduler, even if he has been a scheduler for two years. Dr. Google doesn’t seem to think there is anything unusual with ovarian torsion or pelvic sonograms with doppler. He kept asking me why I wanted one and I kept telling him the doctor ordered it, which he didn’t seem to be able to understand.

I wasn’t able to get in with the actual doctor until next Monday so I have six more days of worry. Bah! The doctors are all getting new computer training this week and next week so the only time they could fit me in was 9:10 on Monday morning. Not ideal, but I guess I’ll take it. I don’t know how I am going to get myself, Erik and the baby ready and out the door by 8:30, but it will be done.

In other news, I am feeling more positive about Elsa. As Helloheather said about her own daughter, bonding is a lot easier when they start real social smiling. It also helps that she’s been awake more. Hard to bond with a sleeping lump.

How about some pictures?

Click through to look at other pictures if you are desperate for baby pictures. I need to upload the pictures of Erik’s graduation and hope we got some cute ones. It was more of a spring program than a graduation ceremony–very cute! We had a set of grandparents sitting in front of us and they were PISSED that all the preschool kids were there. They thought it should only be for the kids who were actually going to kindergarten next year (about 16 out of 40). I can see why they would think that, but I don’t see the point of so much anger. Just sit back and enjoy. Not like these kids were doing anything particularly brilliant and giving big speeches.

We were pleasantly surprised with Elsa’s behavior. She slept the entire time. The louder the environment, the better she sleeps. Must be a defense mechanism.

And now I really have to get to bed if I have any hope of functioning tomorrow. The dear baby likes to be awake from about 11 pm-3 am.

I know how to have a great evening of family fun and frolic.

Step one: Feel like utter shit.

Step two: Realize you have a fever and you are having side pain that ended up knocking you out just two weeks ago.

Step three: Decide to go to the ER.

If you know me at all, you know I am not an ER type of person. I suffer. Not in silence, but without medical intervention. Deciding to go to the ER felt really dumb since we’d have to drag along a four week old baby and a four year old squirrel. What if I was just imagining it? What if I wasn’t on the borders of excruciating pain?

I had one smart thought before we left and gave the babysitter a call. We were able to dump Erik off for a couple of hours, so at least that helped somewhat.

Our local town has an ER center that is relatively new and unused. We didn’t even have time to read a page in our books until we were called back to triage and shown to a room. The doctor arrived relatively quickly as well. If my symptoms hadn’t been mysterious we probably would have been home within 45 minutes.

Nothing can be that simple with a trip to the ER, though. My symptoms were mysterious. The pain was no where near my uterus, which I suspected but my OB didn’t care about two weeks ago since she’s an OB and only knows about utes. The theory is the antibiotics she gave me for an infected incision site partially knocked out a much stronger infection, thus masking the real problem. The doctor was concerned because the pain was in an area that doesn’t contain much but the colon, so he suggest a CT scan.

I guess other people know about CT scans, but I have been very lucky in my life and have never had the need for one before. I was unfamiliar with the process, even though I was an avid ER fan in the early 90s. The main problem? It took for-freakin’-ever. First I had to drink two huge glasses of apple juice mixed with contrast. Then I had to wait 2 hours for the contrast to go into my bowels (I can’t believe I just said bowels). The test took about five minutes, but then we had to wait another 45 minutes while someone read the results.

While this was going on the nurse, doctor and radiologist were all trying to figure out if I was allowed to nurse or not. We heard several different opinions, most of them being that I needed to pump and dump for at least 12 hours. I hate pumping. I would not have a breastfed child if I had to pump at work. I’ve pumped twice since she’s been born, bringing my stored milk up to a whopping 8 ounces, meaning Mike had to go on a mission to buy formula. Do you have any idea how expensive formula is? Holy shit! That stuff must be crusted with gold and stored in diamond vials!

The last person I talked to, the actual radiologist, said I didn’t need to pump and dump. The most recent study by the big radiologist organization said the contrast doesn’t transfer to the mammaries. You have no idea how thrilling it is to stand in a tiny hospital gown, swollen boobies swinging in the breeze, while a young good looking guy talks about your mammaries. I’m just glad my postpartum pad held up because leaving a trail of blood everywhere would have been the icing on the cake.

Results show that I have a dermoid ovarian cyst (sounds fantastic! “Dermoid cyst of the ovary : A bizarre tumor, usually benign, in the ovary that typically contains a diversity of tissues including hair, teeth, bone, thyroid, etc.”) but that was not my immediate problem. I should call the doctor first thing Monday morning to do something about that, but in the mean time I seem to have a kidney infection so I’m taking antibiotics to deal with that.

I hope this is the last thing that happens for awhile. I haven’t felt good since my 35th birthday, 14 months ago. Granted, a lot of that unwellness was pregnancy related and that was a choice, but I am really tired of being tired and in pain. I suppose I’ll have to recover from another surgery with this cyst and then maybe I can be all well. Pretty please?

To make the night even better, Elsa was up till 1, then again from 3-5. Whoo-hoo! Who needs sleep when you’ve got an infection and a cyst full of teeth and hair in your ovary? I’m not even going to think about the “usually benign” comment in the description.

A post from me? Can it really be?

Elsa is one month old today. I wish I could get some decent pictures, but she is always asleep. There are only so many pictures of sleeping babies that I can take. Poor second child. Already she’s getting the shaft.

I feel like I don’t even know what she looks like, which doesn’t make any sense. Surely she must look like more than a fat blob, though. Right? She is one of the fattest babies I’ve ever seen. I know she’ll thin out when she starts walking, but at the moment is is just roll after roll of fat. Her poor little face is covered in baby acne, as well, which makes me crazy. I am a pimple popper. It is so hard to still my hands and not start messing with all those ripe zits all over her face.

I need an opinion from those of you with more than one children. Did you find it harder to bond with the second? I love her, of course, and do everything a good mommy should do but I am not feeling the total, crushing, take your breath away, crying-because-the-baby-will-grow-up feelings that I felt with Erik. Does this just mean I’m wiser and know that she’ll be much more exciting when she’s older or am I having an emotional problem? I don’t know. I feel a lot happier than I did when I had Erik, even though I felt more bonded with him. I am not full of anger and working through all sorts of self-worth issues that come along with quitting my job to be a stay-at-home-mom.

One month in and I still don’t think Elsa is the right name for her. Everyone else thinks I’m crazy, but I can’t help my thoughts and feelings.

Sooooo. . . what else?

Erik graduated from his minnow class and is ready to be a turtle. I haven’t been to his swim class in several weeks so I guess he must have made a whole lot of progress in my absence.

My mom wants me to send him to her for the summer. I think she really thought I would agree to such a plan. And I would if I thought her house was a safe environment for him, but no child needs needs to be around a bunch of drunks. She says she would take him to a daycare when she goes to work, but I can’t trust the safety of the house even when she is there. The drunk neighbors are in and out all the time. My sister has been dragging her low-life friends around again. No one watches the kids when they play outside and there is all kinds of dangerous junk every where. I can’t believe my mom thinks I would send Erik there. I guess she doesn’t realize just how dysfunctional their lifestyle is when viewed through the lens of peaceful and normal (aka no alcohol or drugs).

I guess I better wrap this up pretty quick. I’m feeling a lot better and am almost healed, I think. I can bend over and clean! Who would have thought it could be exciting to spray down the powder room and scrub the floors and walls? Despite my request that my housekeeper, mom and Mike give the room that type of treatment it never got done. I guess none of them understand that is the only way to get rid of the male urine smell. One of these days the child will learn to pee in the pot, not all over my walls, right?

I did have a weird thing happen last night. I was freezing and finally figured out it must be a fever when I was sitting around in a fleece pull over and socks while Mike was in a plain t-shirt. The man is always freezing. Anyway, I had a fever on and off all night, but have been fine today. I am slightly worried, but not sure what I am worried about. Another infection? Mastisis? UTI? The flu? Who knows! I am feeling a little feverish again tonight, but nothing like last night. I guess I better call a doctor tomorrow if I am still feeling feverish. I really don’t want to take another round of antibiotics.

*For new readers: My mom is not an alcoholic. She’s just an enabler. My dad, all his friends, my sister, and her husband are all alcoholics. Her husband is a druggie, too. My dad has a nightly party and since he is so crippled he can’t walk the party comes to him–a random assortment of drunk neighbors and friends. Not a good place for a four year old.

I do hope you all had a wonderful Mother’s Day, though I kind of hate to mention it since I have so many friends who have recently lost their mothers and even a friend who has lost her baby. How can there be any happiness there? It hurts my heart to think of someone losing their sweet, little baby.

I wouldn’t even mention it, but we ended up having a Mother’s Day worth mentioning, mainly for the prime rib. We don’t usually celebrate holidays because we are weird, but today Mike surprised me with a piece of cake and an offer to go out to dinner.

We went to one of our normal haunts and were very surprised to learn that they only had a few items available off their menu and they were all at least double what we normally pay for a meal. After waiting forever for a table we decided to just deal with it and enjoy ourselves. I’m so glad we did. I had a very, very expensive prime rib dinner and it was possibly the most delicious meal I’ve ever eaten. I could get used to eating fancy food. Not that it was particularly fancy–just expensive and really well prepared.

Erik always orders chicken nuggets and never eats them, so I had to be a sneaky mom and order him rotisserie chicken instead. We confuse the waiters because Erik is always very adamant about placing his own order and he knows exactly what he wants, but it is not always what I want him to have. Lucky for him I won the fight today. He is not one for understatement–he declared the chicken was the best thing he’s eaten in his whole life and he wants it all the time. Mama does know best sometimes.

Elsa gave me the best present ever: she slept all the way through the meal. I was sure she’d wake up the minute my food came out, but she slept for three hours straight. I could get used to that! Right now she is in her bouncy seat. She’s been a little fuss-budget this evening so I am learning to go against all my motherly instincts and just set her down. That often makes her happy. After my experience with newborn Erik it is hard to fathom a baby that enjoys being alone in her chair. She never even nurses to sleep. Erik would suck and suck and suck and finally fall asleep. When she’s done, she’s done and she refuses any more milk. I can’t even think of a time that she fell asleep while nursing. I’m trying not to jinx myself, but this bodes well for the future.

The only bad part of the meal was the bathroom break afterwards. Do you really want to hear this?

I took Erik in with me, as is our custom. The only way to get that kid to go to the potty is to trick him, so tonight I had to have him “show me” where the bathroom was because I couldn ‘t find it myself. Anyway, when it was my turn he starts talking really loudly in the semi-crowded bathroom about my diaper. “Mommy! Your diaper has a lot of blood on it! Mommy! It’s so bloody! Mommy, why do you have all that blood on your diaper!” On and on and on and on. I told him to be quiet and not talk about it, but do you think that really worked? Of course not. Ugh. I will be glad when the bleeding stops. I realized that even though he always goes to the bathroom with me this is the first time he’s seen pads since I always use my DivaCup (I don’t change it in front of him, obviously).

How about a little controversy? Something other than baby talk?

One of the bloggers I read has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. Actually, TWO of the bloggers I read have recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, which really really sucks. One of them is someone I really like and enjoy. The other is one of my guilty pleasure reads. I only read her because she is annoying and I like to be outraged by her stupid ideas. I’m so nice.

Anyway, the annoying one is really skinny and posted that someone she knows said fat people would rather have cancer than be fat and she wanted to know if that was really true, sort of implying fat people are stupid.

Tons of people, both fat and skinny, commented that they would rather be fat than have cancer. Duh.

Today the blogger posted that it is only logical that fat people would rather have cancer than be fat and she didn’t get what the outrage was about. I didn’t see any outrage in the comments of the original post, but now I’m outraged. Seriously? Can you imagine preferring cancer, even an “easy” cancer (whatever that may be) to being fat? You’d have to have serious self image problems. I know a couple of people who are skinny and very disgusted by fat people so perhaps they would rather have cancer than be fat, but as a fat person I can’t imagine wishing any type of cancer on myself. Sure there are some things I really hate about being fat (mainly the lack of clothing) but cancer? Really? I am totally offended by the idea that fat is so terrible that cancer is a better alternative. It boggles my mind that anyone would believe that. And what would an “easy” cancer be? Skin cancer? Even if you caught it early you’d have to spend the rest of your life paranoid about getting it again.

Ok, baby is sleeping, time for me to sleep.

Do you think sticking a big spoonful of peanut butter in Erik’s mouth would make him quit talking for a few minutes? I can’t take he nonsense anymore. He’s been telling me the (wrong) time for the past twenty minutes. Plus, he’s planning Mike and my friend’s combined birthday party, so has been cutting out “streamers” from wrapping paper and telling me all the people he’s inviting and the games we’re going to play. I’m sure two adults will LOVE all the games he is planning. He’s going to be sad when he realizes all the neighborhood kids aren’t going to be at this party.

In other news, I’m officially off milk and ice cream. Cheese seems to be ok, thank goodness. Oh how I love a big glass of ice cold milk. Oh how my baby pukes and pukes when I drink one.

I am still not sure about my allergy situation. A part of me thinks the allergy was caused by the antibiotics, as a couple of you have suggested. It was my first thought, but I stopped them on Friday and the rash showed up on Monday. Who knows, though. Antibiotics are weird things. The last time I took them I ended up pregnant. Not saying they caused the pregnancy (I know where babies come from), but it sure was weird to get pregnant the one cycle we didn’t chart or anything after trying everything for 18 months.

Everything is going pretty well here. I have no time to write, of course. When Erik was a baby I could always find time to write since he slept so much. Elsa sleeps even more than he does, but when she’s sleeping I have to do stuff like read a million knock-knock jokes, supervise scooter riding and tell stories.

We’ve been getting out and about a little more. I forgot just how much I hate breastfeeding when I’m not in my comfy chair with my boppy. Breastfeeding on a park bench just about kills my back.

Some of you may remember that my friend, Reebert, made me a breastfeeding cover based on the hooter hider design. I love it! The other day I ran across a super sale on hooter hiders so I bought one just because I can’t resist a super sale. I was so disappointed! Reebert’s design is much more thoughtful and easy to use. I wouldn’t have thought there was that much of a difference, but the hooter hider pales in comparison.

I need to stop buying things just because they are on super sale.

ARGH! Seriously, would someone bring me a giant piece of duct tape for Erik’s mouth. It just won’t stop running, repeating the same thing over and over and over and over. I have no patience for this.

I guess I better go shower while I have the chance. Maybe the boy would be less annoying if I took him outside for a bit.

*If we have to have three hours of nightly screaming, I would appreciate if they would start at 7 or 8. It started at 10 tonight. Please, please, please let it not be an actual three hours of screaming. What happened to my sweet, sleepy newborn?

*Erik and I had some nice bonding time this evening. We made cookies, a nice, wholesome activity. I have a cookie scoop and really like my cookies to look nice. I have never let Erik use the scoop before, but he was begging and I guess there wasn’t a good reason not to let him. I ended up letting him do all the scoops, but I had to leave the room so I could leave him to his business. He was a very proud boy and I was pretty impressed. He did a good job for a four year old.

*We needed a bonding moment after a really rocky morning. The child SPIT in my HAIR. He is beyond lucky that I was feeding Elsa at the time or I wouldn’t have had time to calm myself and I would have beat his butt. Even after I had a few minutes to put her in her basket and start to deal with him, I was so angry I wanted to commit violence. I knew if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. You can not even imagine how enraged I was. Or maybe you can. Imagine someone spitting on your head and how you would respond. Anyway, I spit on his head to show him how it felt. He didn’t like it. Then I put him in time out in his room for way too long. I knew if I had to look at him I would probably go nuts and either scream or spank. He thought I was terribly cruel, but I was just saving him from me.

*I have developed a fairly severe allergy to something. I suspect it is either my shampoo or conditioner. When I get out of the shower my face, back, legs and feet are covered in horrible red itchy patches. Somehow it is the worst on my feet, probably because I stand in the shower and there is enough water to make my feet soak in the stuff I rinse out of my hair. That’s my theory, anyway. If I’m not allergic to something in the shower I have no idea what it could be. I ordered some natural shampoo so I hope that helps. Problem? A lot of natural shampoos have lavender in them, which I am also very allergic to. Is there anything I’m not allergic to?

*I have more to say but I need to get my butt in bed while Mike is still willing to do the walking around. I have two things to do tomorrow that I can’t get out of. I am not looking forward to it, esp since I will have to be up and about fairly early.

*Please forgive me for my lack of commenting. I will try to be better, but it is hard right now.